Slanted coverage has one asking: what's in it for Murdoch?

Jonathan Holmes

The first call came in at two minutes past seven on Monday morning. The ABC's Sydney radio station, 702, wanted to know what I thought about the Daily Telegraph's front page.

Virtually all of it was devoted to one sentence: ''Finally, you now have the chance to KICK THIS MOB OUT''.

Murdoch's always liked to think of himself as an anti-establishment radical. But these days he's just another grumpy old American Republican billionaire.

No one who has even been glancing at the Daily Telegraph over the past year or so could have been surprised. Ever since Paul ''Boris'' Whittaker took over as editor, the Tele has been going for the Gillard government, boots and all.

Target: Kevin Rudd. Photo: Getty Images

But to lead off its election coverage with so savage an editorial kick at the Prime Minister's head is going it a bit, even for Boris. Especially as the PM is not Julia Gillard, whom most of the Tele's readership long ago decided it couldn't stomach, but Kevin Rudd, for whom many in Sydney still have a soft spot.

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Maybe, the cognoscenti have been speculating, it's Col Allan at work. According to the Financial Review's James Chessell and Anne Hyland, the legendary former Tele editor, now editor of The New York Post, had been on holiday in Australia and was unimpressed by the News tabloid's front pages.

''Boring'' is the word Allan is said to have used to Rupert Murdoch and the chief executive of the new News Corporation, Robert Thomson, when he got back to New York.

But whether Monday's front page was shaken by Col or stirred by Boris, what's not in doubt is that the Telegraph's partisanship matters. The election will be won or lost in marginal seats in Queensland and western Sydney. And, as always, the voters that make the difference are not the political tragics who watch Lateline on the ABC and read the polibloggers and the proliferating fact-check websites.

As that old Coalition warrior Grahame Morris put it in The Australian on Monday, these floating voters are ''often uninterested in politics … But they do still watch television. They do listen to morning radio and in many cases they do read the popular newspapers.''

The actual newspapers, not the tablet apps and the websites.

So the tabloid front pages still have an effect - especially the Daily Telegraph's in western Sydney. They matter in their own right, and because Sydney's talkback radio hosts bark out the Tele's stories like Pavlov's dogs.

But what's in it for Rupert? What deals has he cut with Tony Abbott in return for his newspapers' support?

Well, the network certainly poses an existential threat to pay TV - but as the Coalition's communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull pointed out, its NBN-lite is no better, from Foxtel's point of view, than Labor's more expensive version.

Both will make it possible for the NRL to pipe live games direct to the public, rather than through an intermediary like Foxtel. Both have ample bandwidth to allow outfits like Netflix and Apple TV to sell us movies direct to our internet-linked smart TVs.

In fact, Turnbull's fibre-to-the-node system may be a more serious threat to Foxtel, because he's promising to get it into our homes faster.

One thing News can be sure of: an Abbott government will not be renewing Stephen Conroy's attempt to force stricter regulation on the news media and to prevent further media takeovers and mergers.

But then, nor will a future Rudd government. Press regulation is off the agenda for at least a decade.

I reckon the attempt to identify an obvious quid pro quo is misconceived. In his 2011 book, Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power, David McKnight persuasively argued that the traditional view of him is wrong: he doesn't just back winners, or play politics solely to benefit his commercial interests. On the contrary, he has frequently supported losing ventures - like The New York Post, which hasn't made money for decades - because they give him political clout.

Murdoch, argues McKnight, plays politics from conviction. And as he grows older - especially now he has parted ways with Wendi and her lefty Hollywood friends - his convictions are growing more curmudgeonly than ever.

He's always liked to think of himself as an anti-establishment radical. But these days he's just another grumpy old American Republican billionaire funding right-wing think-tanks and bleating about evil labor unions.

The difference is that this particular American billionaire has the wherewithal to influence the outcome of an Australian election - and a legion of eager minions willing to help him do it.

Back in 1975, in the final week of the post-Dismissal election campaign, the staff of The Australian went on strike rather than continue to provide what they saw as the outrageously one-sided coverage that their proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, was insisting on. Imagine that.